Closings

Severe Weather

Mission to Africa: Learning Bari

I learned how to count in the Bari language today. Don’t ask me to repeat it. Some school kids taught me as we took a break from shooting photos at one of the field clinics today. I can’t count the number of patients Omaha doctors and nurses are treating, but I’m betting it was more than 1,000 today.

The team of two dozen blows me away with their patience, endurance, and resolve.

The line of patients is five feet wide and it wraps under an enormous mango tree on the grounds of a remote school in South Sudan, Africa.

The mango tree must have a girth of 14 feet. At its foundation, thick roots wind around the dusty soil and where children find a place in the shade to try out their new crayons. Every child at this school of 400 has three new crayons, thanks to mission volunteers with The Healing Kadi Foundation. I watch the children carefully and thoughtfully color pages given to them by mission workers from Omaha. They’ll give away 10,000 crayons this week. Crayolas never knew such joy.

The classrooms in South Sudan are eye-opening. They remind me of my garage. Dusty concrete floors, metal bars on the window openings, and shutters. There are hard wooden benches in some of the rooms. No one has individual desks or school supplies. There’s a ragged looking chalkboard in each room.

Before clinic starts, I see Dr. John Franklin and a local man in the middle of the school yard holding the South Sudan flag and stitching it with a needle and thread. It’s torn between the stripes and I see this gesture as symbolic in so many ways. It’s about healing a country and its people, one person at a time.

The school library is now overflowing with donated books from the U.S. I counted 20 boxes delivered to this school alone. It’s thanks to St. Leo, St. Pius School and Dr. Dan Steier. Folks from that Omaha church can take pride in knowing they’ve stocked the bookshelves of some very needy children. And with knowledge, comes power.

The docs here are treating cases you’d see in an Omaha emergency room any day of the week, except they don’t have access to an x-ray or ultrasound. They can’t order lab work. They have to make their best guess with what they see, hear and feel.

Someone picked up a guy on the side of the road and drove him here. His dark eyes show he’s terrified. He’s rail thin, and his right leg is a bloody, infectious mess from a motorcycle accident several weeks ago. They give him a plate of rice and beans and he gulps it down like he’s starving. They send nurse Glenette Robinson in to give him an injection of an antibiotics. She’s holding up well. She does the best she can with what she has. They all do.

The docs gather round, wondering if he needs amputation. Has the infection spread? Is it down to the bone? They’re frustrated because they have no access to the stuff they need to really effectively treat a patient here. And it’s the same story, over and over. Exhausted, sweaty, hungry people are diagnosed with hernias, heart defects, parasites and bizarre looking growths. One doctor jokes that this is the place they shoot photos of obscure diseases for medical textbooks.

That’s what happens when there’s no preventative medicine.

And that’s just the physical stuff.

One room over, patients are invited to pray. It’s the spiritual side of this mission trip, treating the whole person. It’s holistic.

Omaha behavioral health nurse Sherrie Schaich (sounds like shy) is cut out for this job. She works for Immanuel Medical Center, but on this trip, she works for the big boss. She prays with people. Listen in to a session or two and she feels their loss, grief and frustration. They pray to stop alcoholism, rampant among men in this area.

Men here have their own set of issues. Many live with a refugee camp mentality. They grew up during wartime and got used to hand outs. Some don’t have a work ethic. No one taught them.

They pray to be blessed with food and water. The average family lives on a dollar a day. The average family has 5 children. We meet single mothers, single fathers, and orphans. In Africa, men are allowed to have more than one wife. Wives pray that they’re not ignored, divorced, shunned by the family. The women pray that their husbands will stop beating them. They hold hands with mission volunteers Sara, Bonnie, Denise, and Sherrie and they share their needs.

The medicines handed out in the makeshift pharmacy next door will run out in a month. The aches and pains of the South Sudanese people will probably come back. But the mission team wants them to know that hope is everlasting.

Copyright 2013 byKETV.com All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.